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Jaime de Angulo
| occupation = Linguist and Novelist | nationality = Spanish | subject = Native Californian Tribes }} Jaime de Angulo (1887-1950) was an American poet, novelist, linguist, and ethnomusicologist in the western United States. Life Angulo was born in Paris of Spanish parents. He came to America in 1905 to become a cowboy, and eventually arrived in San Francisco on the eve of the great 1906 earthquake. He lived a picaresque life, including stints as a cowboy, medical doctor and psychologist. He survived a suicide attempt after cutting his throat from ear to ear in Berkeley, California. He became a linguist who contributed to the knowledge of certain Indian languages of Northern California and Mexico. Career He began his career at the University of California, Berkeley in the early 1920s, shortly after his marriage to L.S. (“Nancy”) Freeland. During this period he and his wife lived among many native Californian tribes, often becoming fully integrated into their daily lives, in an attempt to study their cultures, languages and music. As a linguist he contributed to the knowledge of more than a dozen native Northern Californian and Mexican languages and music-systems. De Angulo was particularly interested in the semantics of grammatical systems of the tribes he studied, but he was also a skilled phonetician and a pioneer in the study of North American ethnomusicology, particularly in his recordings of native music. De Angulo corresponded with Franz Boas, Alfred L. Kroeber, and Edward Sapir, and received considerable support for his fieldwork from Boas’s Committee on American Native Languages. In the end, de Angulo’s Bohemian lifestyle kept him from pursuing a normal academic career, and his involvement in Native American research effectively came to an end following the death of his son Alvar in an automobile accident in 1933 and his retreat to an isolated hilltop ranch at Big Sur. At this point his writings took a wild turn into fiction and poetry. Much of his fictional work attempted to recognize and embrace the native "coyote tales", or the trickster wisdom inherent in native storytelling. Ezra Pound called him "the American Ovid" and William Carlos Williams "one of the most outstanding writers I have ever encountered." de Angulo also went on to tutor numerous famous authors including Jack Spicer in linguistics, and Robert Duncan in North American shamanic sorcery. He was friend and colleague to poets, composers, and scholars such as Harry Partch, Henry Miller, Robinson Jeffers, Henry Cowell, Carl Jung, D.H. Lawrence, and many others. Perceptions of de Angulo swing wildly; he is seen alternately as a gifted but irresponsible and failed amateur, to an ‘‘Old Coyote,’’ an anarchist hero and talented subversive. http://linguistics.buffalo.edu/ssila/books/indbook/b222.htm. De Angulo shaped and diversified the scholarly picture of the native Californian landscape. Recognition In popular culture Angulo appears as a character in Jack Kerouac's books. In Desolation Angels, Kerouac calls him "the mad Spanish anthropologist sage who’d lived with the Pomo and Pit River Indians of California, famous old man, whom I’d read and revered only three years ago while working the railroad outa San Luis Obispo."Jack Kerouac, from "Desolation Angels", Nagualli weblog, July 20, 2012. Blogspot, Web, June 30, 2014. Publications Poetry *''Three Poems. London?: Kater Murr's Press, 2000. *''Home among the Swinging Stars: Collected poems of Jaime de Angulo. Albuquerque, NM: La Alameda Press, 2006. Fiction * Coyote Man and Old Doctor Loon. San Francisco: Turtle Island, 1973. * The Lariat: A novel. San Francisco: Turtle Island, 1974. *''Don Bartelomeo: A novel''. San Francisco: Turtle Island, 1974. * Shabegok (edited by Bob Callahan). San Francisco: Turtle Island, 1976. * How The World Was Made (edited by Bob Callahan). San Francisco: Turtle Island, 1976. *''The Lariat, and other writings''. Berkeley, Ca: Counterpoint, 2009. Non-fiction *''The Trial of Ferrer: A clerical / judicial murder''. New York: New York Labor News, 1920. *''Miwok and Pomo Myths''. New York: American Folklore Society, 1928. *''A New Religious Movement in North-Central California''. Washington, DC: American Anthropological Association, 1929; Berkeley, CA : California Indian Library Collections Project, 1989. *''The Lutuami Language (Klamath-Modoc)'' Societe des Americanistes, 1931. *''Karok Texts''. New York: Columbia University Press, 1931; Berkeley, CA : California Indian Library Collections Project, 1989. *''Pomo Creation Myths''. Washington, DC: American Anthropological Association, 1935; Berkeley, CA : California Indian Library Collections Project, 1989. *''Indians in Overalls''. San Francisco: Turtle Island, 1973. *''The Creation Myth of the Pomo Indians''. Berkeley, CA : California Indian Library Collections Project, 1989. *''The Achumwahi Life Force''. Berkeley, CA : California Indian Library Collections Project, 1989. *''The Background of the Religious Feeling in a Primitive Tribe''. Berkeley, CA : California Indian Library Collections Project, 1989. *''Achomawi Kinship Systems''. Berkeley, CA: California Indian Library Collections, 1992. Juvenile *''Indian Tales''. New York: A.A. Wyn, 1953; New York: Hill & Wang, 1953. **published in UK as Red Indian Tales. London: Heinemann, 1954. Collected editions *''The Jaime de Angulo Library'' (edited by Bob Callahan & Clifford Burke). San Francisco: Turtle Island, 1973. *''Coyote's Bones: Selected poetry and prose of Jaime de Angulo''. San Francisco: Turtle Island, 1974. *''A Jaime de Angulo Reader''. Berkeley, CA: Turtle Island, 1979. Letters and papers *''Jaime in Taos: The Taos papers of Jaime de Angulo''. San Francisco: City Lights Books, 1985. Except where noted, bibliographical information courtesy WorldCat.Search results = au:Jaime de Angulo, WorldCat, OCLC Online Computer Library Center Inc. Web, June 30, 2014. See also *List of U.S. poets References * A Jaime de Angulo Reader (edited by Bob Callahan) * The Music of the California Indians (edited by Peter Garland) * Jaime in Taos: The Taos Papers of Jamie de Angulo, by Gui de Angulo (Jaime's daughter) * The Old Coyote of Big Sur: The Life of Jaime de Angulo, by Gui de Angulo Notes External links * Three poems ;About *Jaime de Angulo at Angelfire *The Life of Jaime de Angulo *[http://galatearesurrection9.blogspot.ca/2008/03/home-among-swinging-stars-collected.html review of Home Among the Swinging Stars] ;Books *Jaime de Angulo at Amazon.com ;Etc. * Finding Aid for the Jaime de Angulo Papers, ca. 1890-1982, UCLA, Special Collections, Charles E. Young Research Library * Jaime de Angulo papers at the California Language Archive Category:Ethnomusicologists Category:American poets Category:American anthropologists Category:American short story writers Category:American novelists Category:French emigrants to the United States Category:University of California, Berkeley alumni Category:1887 births Category:1950 deaths Category:American people of Spanish descent Category:20th-century poets Category:English-language poets Category:Poets